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Mobility News Briefing - Oct 30

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The story? Halloween is right around the corner, and Chloe Green of InformationAge gave creative names for threats that have cause IT nightmares -- "greedy ghouls", "trick or treat" and "Frankenstein's monster mashup."

Greedy ghouls? The threat of a device - laptop, smartphone or tablet - that contains corporate data being stolen. Green says enterprises tend to focus on cyber security and often forget about physical security.

Trick or Treat? Spam and phishing emails looking to access the enterprise in tricky ways. Green says that these days even spam filters can't block everyone of these nasty inbounds, so it's important that employees are prepped on how to deal with them.

Frankenstein's monster match up? IT organizations are still operating in "segmented, siloed environments" that don't work well together, and it makes it impossible to keep up with the speed of business. Green says it's time to break down these barriers and work towards common goals, so the enterprise as a whole can benefit.

The story? The mobile revolution is behind us as smartphones and tablets are everywhere. Galen Gruman of InfoWorld took a look back at the notable predictions around the mobile revolution and compared them to how things actually played out.

How the mobile revolution really played out...

Despite predictions that the only mobile devices that would connect to work systems would be company-issued devices because of security, the BYOD trend is here to stay, and there's been no disasters because of it.

At first, analysts did not see smartphones as valuable to the enterprise, and their skepticism was largely justified because many people do not leverage their devices for much more than email. Galen says this is because "it's hard to find broad usage of mobile apps in business today." He does acknowledge that there are apps for specific business use cases that are being used by healthcare professionals, IT, police officers, building inspectors and utility companies.

Predictions way overstated the risk imposed on mobile device data, causing unnecessary fear. While security has been and always will be top of mind, mobile devices do not pose as significant threat as data breaches of thumb drives, CDs and DVDs, and laptops that happen much more frequently than breaches of smartphones and tablets.

The story? Bob O'Donnell, Founder and Chief Analyst at Technalysis Research, says that mindset has a lot to do with it because "at its core, the move to mobility requires a change in the way companies think about data and how they access, use, and secure it."

The problem? IT organizations feel the pressure to embrace mobile technology across all aspects of their organizations and are running into issues because they are not thoroughly thinking about the implications. In order to truly realize the benefits of mobility, companies need to rethink their core business processes and procedures to understand where mobile fits in the mix.